Blog

Josh and I spent a lovely day today harvesting the last of the grapes: about a hundred pounds each of Riesling and chardonnay, and a wee bit of Frontenac and Marquette and a few barely there. The Glenora and Someset seedless have produced about 3 gallons of raisins which we will enjoy all winter.

Since we were really going at it in the winery with grapes, we also shredded 112 pounds of golden spice pears to mix up a batch of pear wine.

So far we've now reached almost 500 gallons of wine, and with an almost total grape crop failure, we feel really fortunate to have done this well.

At last Sunday's garden club tour and tasting, we found our Sand Cherry Kiss and rhubarb wines very popular (both sweet), with the Sand Cherry Dry well received by those who like dry wine. I've also started the raspberry wine (approx 24 gallons) a few days ago and it has reached a simply lovely deep pink color.

Autumn is so exciting! And Delicious! Tomorrow we will start harvesting the named cultivars of elderberry, which are twice the size of the wild ones and sweeter. Yesterday we gathered a bunch more rhubarb to add to our stash for this year's crop. The only thing left to do in the vineyard is the remaining raspberry harvest which we hope will last another two or three weeks before hard frost.

It has been a good summer and a good harvest, despite our grape failure. Now it's time to wait for the wine to age a bit, then full steam ahead with bottling and labeling, and finally, selling.